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Stuff to Worry About, #2

In this installment of Stuff to Worry About, we are going to worry about jellyfish. I recently read (and aggressively loved) the Best American Science and Nature Writing book that Mary Roach edited, and one of the essays was about jellyfish. Did you know you needed to be worried about jellyfish? You need to be worried about jellyfish. They can survive anything. They proliferate in water with insanely high acidity levels. They are the cockroaches of the sea, basically, except unlike cockroaches, they also sting you. Places that never used to have jellyfish now have jellyfish. There are trillions of kinds of jellyfish and you cannot escape them anywhere. Also, a jellyfish mouth is the same as its anus.

Here’s what this means to me. When all the other fish have died out, and the plagues and natural disasters have come, and the pitifully reduced human race is struggling to survive, we will be surviving by eating jellyfish. FOREVER. If that doesn’t convince you to take ecological issues seriously, I don’t know what will.

(I feel like this theory is going to make me into a crazy person. I’ll see someone throwing a water bottle into a trash can and I’ll grab them and be like DO YOU WANT TO BE EATING JELLYFISH FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? THEIR MOUTHS ARE THEIR ASSES! RECYCLE YOUR WATER BOTTLE!)

Share this:

It’s not the end of the world! We could start cloning peanutbutterfish!!!! This doesn’t have to be a future without a good sandwich!!!!

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

I don’t LIKE SANDWICHES.

http://gravatar.com/justabookreader Amy

Note to self, recycle my water bottle or jellyfish will inhabit the earth. Got it.

I like these posts. Asparagus now jellyfish. What’s next?!

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Who knows? Whatever worries me is next! :p

http://twitter.com/MumsyNancy NWK (@MumsyNancy)

*can’t stop laughing* Oh how I want to be there when you finally crack.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

It came very close to happening the other day but I refrained.

http://reading-rambo.blogspot.com Alice (@alice_sings)

I DO NOT WANT TO EAT JELLYFISH BUT THE RECYCLING BIN IS SO FAR AWAY

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

ALICE. RECYCLE YOUR WATER BOTTLE. Or just drink water from the tap, that’s even better. If you are going to protest that Chicago water doesn’t taste good, be aware that I will have no sympathy for this because you obviously should move to New York.

zibilee

Oh my. Jenny, I need you to stop worrying me, as I already come with dangerously high levels of worry colliding in my brain, and do not need to worry about how a jellyfish will taste, and how I am a vegetarian, and I would starve. And their mouths are their anuses? Oh God. I am worried already. But I do so love these posts. I think we are worrying twins. People, recycle your water bottles, damn it!!

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Oh no sorry sorry sorry! But realistically, you can’t keep being a vegetarian in the apocalypse. It will be dystopian. You will have to eat whatever comes your way so that you’ll have your strength to fight off the cannibals or warlords or zombies or whatever.

http://theliteraryomnivore.wordpress.com The Literary Omnivore

Aw, c’mon, fried jellyfish might be okay! (And would this be our only source of meat? Because if we have to go vegetarian, we’ll make it okay.)

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Ewwwwww. Fried jellyfish could never be okay.

http://necromancyneverpays.wordpress.com Jeanne

Jellyfish: not good to swim with, and not good to eat. The only good thing about one is that it’s fascinating to watch them undulate underwater. In an aquarium. From the other side of the glass. For the past 15 years or so I’ve gone with a group of college friends to the beach in SC in June. Because after June, there are more jellyfish. And hurricanes. But mostly…jellyfish in that cloudy, nutritious, gray, Atlantic water.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

I don’t even like watching them undulate. It just reminds me of how much they will sting me if I get in the water with them. I’ve never been stung but I’m terrified of it happening. Their creepy little bodies are so creepy. Ugh. That’s why I only swim in very very cold water.

Scallops expel their feces straight into their own shells which they sit in for a while before finally “rinsing” it out. That black line you pull from the shrimp? Intestine filled with feces. Any flat fish? Sits on the bottom of the ocean or river and eats feces that falls down from other animals. A couple semesters of marine biology has pretty much ruined lots of shellfish and fish for me. Jellyfish are the least of my worries. At least they’re always moving and I know how to treat stings.
I promise to recycle though! I like balance and harmony in the oceans.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

That is gross but luckily I hardly ever eat shellfish. I admit that I do eat crawfish whenever I can, but you already have to turn off the squeamish part of your brain for that because you are ripping their bodies in half and breaking their ribs each time you eat one so….

http://webereading.com Kristen M.

Yep. I totally couldn’t do the crawfish thing. And don’t you boil them alive like lobsters? Evil.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

You could really do the crawfish thing. If I can, and I am the most squeamish person on earth, then you can. Because they are so delicious. (My mother’s friend does this exceptionally creepy thing where she organizes all the discarded crawfish into rows with all of them facing her. So their eyes are watching her.) Yes, we do boil them alive like lobsters. I know I know. But they taste so good. Also we do this fun slash sadistic thing wherein everyone picks a crawfish and we do a crawfish RACE and whichever crawfish wins the race gets to go free.

http://wormhole.carnelianvalley.com Charlie

The mouth thing, yuck. Though what Kristen’s said is just as weird.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Yep, it is. I will now proceed to forget what Kristen’s said as quickly as I can.

Aonghus Fallon

There’s been a massive proliferation of jellyfish off the east-coast of Ireland, partially due to climatic changes, partially due to their natural predators being killed off (although for the life of me I can’t remember what was eating the jellyfish in the first place). Vermin maybe – but I find them as beautiful as I find them sinister.

Kudos to Kirstin for pulling that little black bit out of the shrimp before eating it!

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Yes, you see? There are jellyfish proliferating every damn place! That is why there will be infinity jellyfish soon.

http://twitter.com/estellasrevenge Andi (@estellasrevenge)

Trying not to CACKLE in the office reading this while my boss is interview across the hall. It’s so tough, and it hurts a little. I totally agree. Those a-hole jellyfish are the bane of all mankind’s existence and I don’t want to eat them. Ever.

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

Me eeiiither oh what will we dooooooo when it is the future?

http://classicvasilly.wordpress.com Vasilly

Their mouths are their asses!! WTF?! Now I’m paranoid and need to read that essay. Have you read the graphic novel, World Without Fish?

http://readingtheend.com Jenny

I never have! Should I?

http://classicvasilly.wordpress.com Vasilly

Yes you should. 😉

http://www.dogeardiary.blogspot.com Jeane

Did you know there is a jellyfish that NEVER DIES. It is called the immortal jellyfish. You must read this!